Agents must give tenants decent place to call their home – not list of excuses

There are many bumpy and sometimes lumpy paths to be navigated, finds Heather Hill

After months of broken promises, I’ve had to complain to my letting agent about the lack of response to my repairs requests.

As a writer I’m prone to construct long letters in order to get my point across, and this particular list of grievances was no different. I was on the warpath. One that has, I confess, led me in that same writerly way to here.

My complaint led to a visit from one of the directors who was very outwardly friendly and charming, yet punctuated his property inspection with the occasional remarks along the lines of: ‘Yes, I have to repair these things myself with my own house.’ I’m going to hazard a guess here: that this is a home he owns, using money that ultimately, one would hope, adds value for his own pocket.

Together we perused the uneven pathways I consider dangerous, with cavernous cracks and holes that he found to be ‘aged but not broken up and easily fixed (by us, the tenant) with a bit of concrete mix’; the damp patches on the bathroom ceiling thanks in part to the undersized and inefficient extractor fan. We can buy special paint to treat the mould. The rotten windowsills he glanced over with an air of indifference that silently suggested they were simple enough for us to renew. The bumpy, uneven stone floors no contractor wants to quote for laminate covering. We, the tenant, can fix that.

The appraisal of the secondhand kitchen we bought and fitted